Color Study
by lajulie
Summary: A study of Leia and Han's relationship, in color. Originally posted on Tumblr for Scoundress Saturdays, from the prompt: "Colour."
1. Chapter 1

This fic was originally posted on Tumblr for Scoundress Saturdays, following the prompt "Colour."

* * *

 **Color Study**

 _ **White**_

"Your autovalet is broken," the Princess said flatly, appearing in the doorway. She was still dressed in the clothes she'd borrowed to wear while her dress was being cleaned. She must have taken him up on his offer to use the shower; her hair was again in the large buns on either side of her head, but it looked darker, still wet.

Han had to chuckle as he followed her down the corridor. Even in that old blue robe—a leftover from Bria that Chewie had pulled out of some compartment somewhere—and those ridiculously too-big pants (rolled over three times at the waist so that they didn't immediately fall off her hips), the Princess walked like there was an invisible crown on her head.

"Y'know," he warned gently, "It ain't built for big-time cleaning. That doesn't make it _broken_." He'd already told her that getting the stains from the garbage masher completely out was probably not going to be possible, and to his surprise, she'd just said, "I know."

Now she stopped and looked back at him, one eyebrow raised. _Yep, definitely a Princess._ "I understand," she said, as if she were speaking to an especially stubborn child. "But I don't think this is going to help with the smell." She indicated the autovalet with a flourish of her hand.

 _No, it was not._ Grey water was backing up into the machine, meaning that pure white dress, stained by wet garbage, was getting even dirtier now. Not to mention smellier. "Chewie!" he barked into the comm. "Shut off the greywater pump! NOW!"

* * *

 _ **Purple**_

They'd found her another snow-white dress, this one with a plunging neckline and sheer fabric on the arms. The jewelry did a good job of covering up what the makeup or the dress couldn't hide: the purple bruise on her wrist, and the other marks on the back of her neck, where they'd done the injections.

"How did you know?" she'd asked softly, as he'd helped her clean the wounds and applied bacta and healing salve to the worst spots.

After Luke had gone into the shower and gotten over the initial shock of _water! pouring down on him!_ Han had discreetly pulled the Princess aside and offered to help her get her injuries fixed up, including offering for Chewie to chaperone "in case you can't trust a mercenary like me."

"No," she'd said, "I trust you," and oddly enough, it seemed that she did. So it hadn't been too much of a leap for him to admit why he knew so much about Imperial interrogation procedures.

" _Was_ one of 'em, once," he'd said. "Long time ago. Another life."

"Another life," she'd repeated. She'd looked so young, and so small, in that moment.

Now, standing on the stairs ahead of them, she looked a million feet tall, like the goddess at the crest of a mountain, bending down to bestow wisdom and medals to the mortals below. Her smile was glossy, dazzling, and she wielded it graciously.

But Han couldn't help wanting to see the human woman again. After she rose up from placing the medal around his neck, he winked.

For just a flash, he saw the corners of her eyes crinkle up as she smiled.

* * *

 _ **Red**_

Everything on Hoth was white. Everything, everywhere. It was like they'd taken Leia's old senatorial dress (which was never quite the same after the Death Star and the faulty autovalet) and laid it over the entire landscape, made it into uniforms, carved it into dwellings and a medbay, a hangar and a command center. The only bits of color were the shocking orange of the x-wing pilots' flight suits and the vaguely brownish protein sources that passed for meat at the mess.

And, of course, Leia's red lipstick.

It wasn't true red; it was some sort of rust-red hybrid, dark but not bloody dark, distinctive but not garish, applied faithfully like another part of her uniform. And it stubbornly invaded Han's world, painting itself on kaffe cups in his galley, going head-to-head with him over breaches in protocol and differences in strategy, turning up in a weary smile as he appeared in that painfully white command center to bring her dinner. Once or twice, it left a mark on his cheek during a rare tender moment, though she always carefully wiped it away.

When they left the garment of white for the uncertainty of asteroids and stars, Leia and her red lips had come along for the ride. But after the first day of their journey to Bespin, the red lips disappeared.

"What?" she said, sipping her kaffe from a mug with no stain on it.

Han realized he'd been staring. "Nothin'," he said. "Just not used to seein' you without the lipstick."

She smiled, and Han didn't miss the red anymore.

* * *

 _ **Blue**_

"Thank you," Leia said, shrugging on the t-shirt with obvious relish. "This is much better."

It was his favorite, the Corellian Dreadnoughts shirt that he'd worn into a comfortable softness over the years, but Han didn't mind. The dark blue was beautiful against Leia's pale skin, and if it meant she could stop wearing that old robe, all the better. Let Chewie give him hell about it later; he was done caring about that now.

"I'm sorry, I just felt weird in that robe," Leia admitted. "Like it was for—someone else."

"There's no one else," Han said, bringing Leia and the softness of his old shirt back to his skin.


	2. Chapter 2

**_White_**

Leia wasn't sure why she was standing by the autovalet, watching her white snowsuit bob up and down.

"Don't trust it?" Han asked, coming up behind her. "Can't say I blame you," he said, with a bit of a laugh, and Leia suddenly remembered how the greywater in the machine had backed up on the way back from Yavin, her white senatorial dress the victim that time. Not that the dress would have been worth much in any case, after the day it had been through.

She shrugged. "It's something to do," she noted, and Han nodded.

"Here," he said, handing her a pair of socks. "Not much, but at least they'll keep your feet warm. And they're white," he noted, as if he genuinely thought white was her favorite color. _Does he know me at all?_

"Thanks," she said, taking them from him. The comfortable familiarity they'd reached in the cockpit on the way out of the Imperial garbage heap had given way to an awkward sort of dance this morning, when Han had offered to lend her some clothes and give her a chance to clean the snowsuit she'd been wearing since they'd left Hoth. She was in a pair of his old sweatpants, cut off to avoid dragging on the floor, and was still wearing the camisole that went under the snowsuit, the blue robe she'd borrowed after Yavin making a return appearance to cover her up.

She pulled the borrowed robe a little tighter around her, instantly regretting it after seeing the look Han gave her. The robe was nice and all, but hardly practical for helping out with repairs, and she didn't intend to spend the next—was it six weeks, really?—sitting around idly. Not to mention that the robe seemed to make Han act like he'd seen a ghost.

Leia didn't want him to look past her, not now. She couldn't stand the thought of him looking past her for the next six weeks any more than she could stand the idea of fighting with him for that period of time.

She'd just opened her mouth to ask something when Han began to speak as well. They stumbled over each other for a minute.

"No—it's fine," Leia said.

"Just sayin'," Han said, working hard to look at her, "there's some kaffe. If you want." _We should talk_ was implied.

Leia nodded. "Be there in a minute."

* * *

 ** _Brown_**

The deep brown swirl in her mug, the steam lifting off of it—it was something to look at, anyway. Chewie had made it, obviously; he made the strongest kaffe out of any of them, which Leia had always appreciated. He had already made himself scarce, off to repair something, leaving her alone with Han.

She'd never been at such a loss for words before—well, except for that moment in the circuitry bay. _He's going to tell me it was a mistake_ , she thought, _and it will be awkward, but we'll get over it. I'll get over it_.

She tried out _there's nothing to get over_ , but Leia didn't even believe herself when she thought that.

 _You're being ridiculous_ , _Leia_ , she berated herself. _Look at him and face the damn music_.

She looked up, and he smiled, and she didn't need to stare at her kaffe anymore.

* * *

 ** _Hazel_**

"What?" he asked, smiling but starting to turn away.

"No, don't," she said, reaching up to push his hair away from his face. She felt deliciously possessive and forward, doing this, as if what they'd been doing for the last few hours hadn't been intimate enough. But she wanted to see—

"What're you doin'?" he asked, amused but almost a little—self-conscious? as she cupped his cheek with her hand, holding him still, and looking, really looking at him.

"I'm trying to see what color your eyes really are," she admitted. "Hold still."

He complied, but he was almost blushing under her quiet scrutiny, blinking silently at her. "What's the verdict?"

"I'm still looking," she insisted, though she kissed him on the temple for his trouble. "Green, mostly, but you have this gold that seeps through sometimes…and it's like they're rimmed with blue."

"Hazel," he said, wriggling away to kiss her, smiling but clearly still a bit thrown by all the attention.

"Fair's fair," she said, batting her lashes for emphasis. Her eye color was obvious, after all, and Han had spent plenty of time gazing into her eyes himself.

"True," he said, his hazel eyes focused on her again.

* * *

 ** _Pink_**

All the clothing options Lando's people had provided were various shades of pink, though none of them were labeled that way. They were named like lipsticks: "Blush," "Rose," "Bashful," "Sunset."

" _Bashful_? Someone thought you would wear something called _Bashful_?" Han teased her. "Well, I guess that means they really don't know who you are, at least."

"They're Pink and Darker Pink and Even Darker Pink But with a Little Purple," she laughed. "I refuse to call them the other names."

"Even Darker Pink But with a Little Purple is nice," he said, when she tried it on.

" 'Sunset' it is, then," she said, finding the lipstick shade that matched, then letting him ruin it again.


	3. Chapter 3

**_Gold_**

When Leia was a little girl, a little princess, nothing was left out in the air long enough to tarnish. As soon as their duty was done, the elegant tiaras and circlets came off her mother's dark brown braids to be polished, cared for, put away, preserved. Leia had been impatient with finery—the dresses that her aunts liked to wriggle her into were uncomfortable, the hairstyles itchy, she couldn't _move_ —but fascinated with the necklaces and crowns Queen Breha removed to become Mama again.

Occasionally she had been allowed to hold them, try them on her own head, before they were taken away. Her mother had offered a good deal of free reign in that area, much to her aunts' chagrin.

 _She's a five-year-old girl. Let her play a little._

 _They're not playthings, Your Highness. She needs to learn to show them respect._

 _She needs to show_ people _respect. These things are beautiful, but they're only things._

Leia stared at the tarnished pieces of gold in her hands, questioning what to do with them now that they'd been removed. A perverse kind of tiara, a necklace she'd used to squeeze the life from a Hutt.

It was strange, but she didn't even need to wonder what her mother would think of her right now. She knew, somehow. Her mother the pacifist, the beautiful and ever-elegant queen, the firm but gentle ruler of a peace-loving planet, would not have batted an eye. Breha would have looked at her daughter, sunburned and covered in Hutt slime, and said, _Some fights are worth it. Some fights are necessary. Listen to your heart, Lelila. It will tell you what is right_.

She wondered, idly, what her aunts would have thought.

 _They would have died of horror_ , she decided.

But she hadn't, they hadn't died. _He_ hadn't.

She looked over at Han, who had finally fallen asleep in his bunk. His skin was still pale, his body still shivering from the aftereffects of hibernation sickness. But he was here, and he was alive.

Lando had hated their rescue plan, even as he had fully supported it. "Leia, no," he'd said, when she'd insisted that she needed to be the one to pose as the bounty hunter, to bring Chewie in. "This could go wrong in so many ways!"

"Yes," Luke had agreed, "but it could go right in one way." Since Bespin, Luke had lost some of his sunniness, his golden optimism, but had gained this calm, confident voice that was useless to argue against.

Though Lando had tried. "I don't like those odds," he'd muttered.

 _Never tell me the odds_ , Leia had thought, and that was when she'd known for sure that they would get Han back.

* * *

 ** _White_**

After the blowing sands of Tatooine, the halls of _Home One_ seemed almost impossibly white and sterile. _Perfect for planning a surgical strike against the enemy_ , Leia reminded herself, but strange for the ragtag band of Rebels that had won so many hard-fought battles against the Empire.

She hadn't worn white since she'd been back. It wasn't that she meant anything by it, particularly, though she knew some would interpret it that way. And it wasn't as if she'd never wear it again. But it just didn't seem like her color anymore.

Of course, she didn't have many other sartorial choices; it wasn't like she could take time out from plotting the end of the Empire to go shopping. And as much as she loved Han's blue Corellian Dreadnoughts t-shirt— "my shirt, you gave it to me," she teased when he tried to take it back—she couldn't exactly wear that to a briefing.

"You gonna get dressed?" he asked her, as she stood in his cabin— _their_ cabin—pondering her options one morning.

She put a hand on her hip and raised an eyebrow at him. "I think people might have trouble paying attention to Mon if I show up in this," she said, indicating the Alliance-issue skivvies she was wearing.

"I'm a fan," he said, snaking an arm around her waist and pulling her into a kiss. "But I see what you mean." He continued kissing down her neck, and Leia was tempted to forget the briefing entirely in favor of more of _this_. She breathed in deeply, shuddering a bit as Han kissed her in that spot behind her ear.

She almost whined as he pulled away, but he was grinning at her.

"Have to take a rain check, Sweetheart," he said. "Duty calls." He reached over to the stack of clothes on the bunk, fresh from the autovalet, and handed her a shirt and pants.

It was good to have a little color back in her life.

* * *

 ** _Green_**

Darkness used to feel like something she could slip into, unnoticed. One minute you were starlight, the next, nothing, gone for years before someone noticed your light had gone out.

But it wasn't that easy to slip away into nothing, Leia realized. Darkness had shape, and texture; it had a million greens and golds and bloodstained reds and deep blues behind it. And someone unafraid of the night could have been guarding your starlight for years.

Han could see in the dark. He had lived in the shadows most of his life, knew its safety and cruelty. He hadn't let her slip away, even when she'd wanted to. Even when he'd had to fight her to do it.

She'd bared her darkness to him before, in the confines of his cabin on their way to Bespin. _My fault_ , she'd confessed. _My mother, my father, my people. My fault_.

 _No_ , he'd insisted, as many times as he'd needed to. _Never. Not yours to hold_.

This was going to be harder. This felt so much more fundamental, the darkness inside her from birth. _I'm wrong. Angry. Fearful. Like him. We've already hurt you too much. Not again. Never again_.

Under a grove of trees, the words spilled out of her, the darkness threatening to douse the firelight from the celebrations nearby. _My father_ , she told him. _And I have it, too_. She steeled herself for his response, got ready for him to walk away.

Instead, he looked at her. Saw her, as he'd seen her so many times before, darkness and light, green and gold and blood red and deep blue. Unafraid.

He smiled and touched her cheek. "I love you," he said, and she knew it to always be true.


End file.
